Firefighters Defeat Smoke, Find Girls

Hartford firefighters using a thermal-imaging device found two girls crouched in a smoky apartment and carried them to safety Monday in a fire that caused heavy damage to a North End building.

The fire at 978 Albany Ave. began in a rear apartment on the third floor of the building, which includes eight apartments on the top two floors and the Le Mirage restaurant and lounge on the first floor.

As the fire spread on the third floor about 6 p.m., smoke started filling up a neighboring apartment where the two girls were trapped, Hartford fire Capt. Eugene Cieri said.

Tom Bagata, one of the first firefighters to arrive on the scene, spotted the two girls, 3 and 5 years old, staring out a window. He alerted the department's rescue team, which sent Lt. Eddie Kureczka and firefighter Mariano Cortez inside to get them.

``They were panicking, you could see that,'' Bagata said. ``The window was shut, and they didn't know what to do.''

Kureczka and Cortez went up the stairs to the third floor and, using the thermal-imaging device, found the girls crouching inside their apartment, Cieri said. They picked up the girls and carried them downstairs, where they were taken to Connecticut Children's Medical Center to be treated for minor smoke inhalation, he said.

The thermal-imaging devices, which the department began acquiring two years ago, are hand-heldcameras that enable firefighters to distinguish people from other objects obscured by smoke. The cameras disclose human body heat by showing a white image, Cieri said.

``It's safe to say that if it wasn't for this device, and the bravery of our firefighters, these children would have been much worse off,'' he said.

Robert Green, 22, a cousin of the two girls, said he was watching over them, as well as a third cousin, when the fire started. He said he smelled smoke coming from outside the apartment and realized he couldn't get down the stairs.

Green said he then grabbed one of the cousins, another young girl, and jumped out a window onto a fire escape with her in his arms. He then tried to go back inside to get the other two girls, he said, but couldn't get past the smoke.

Fire Capt. Terry Waller said the two girls who were rescued were dazed and had watery eyes when they were brought out by Kureczka and Cortez.

Waller estimated that the four families who live on the building's third floor will need to find a place to stay until damage can be repaired. The cause of the fire is under investigation.